All those who have an interest in the natural history of California will be delighted to know – if they don’t already – that volume seventy-one in the superb California Natural History Guides series from the University of California Press is devoted to the Sharks, Rays, and Chimeras of California.
Written by David A. Ebert and beautifully illustrated by Matthew D. Squillante, Sharks, Rays, and Chimeras of California begins with an excellent introduction which explains the general natural history of the various Chondrichthyans potentially found of the California coast. It then moves on to individual species accounts of forty-three different sharks, twenty-two rays, and three chimeras – complete with not only paragraphs detailing all the normally expected information about the species (description, habitat, range, etc.) but information on “Human Interactions” as well that is particularly valuable in both debunking popular misunderstandings about these creatures and increasing the understanding of just how much of a threat to them human activities may pose.
As the vast majority of the species included in this book have ranges that extend far away from the California coast (the Frilled Shark, for instance, is known to occur from Japan to the eastern North Atlantic), it should go without saying that Sharks, Rays, and Chimeras of California is – just as so many other volumes in the California Natural History Guides series are – a very valuable book indeed for naturalists far beyond the California state lines to possess in their respective libraries.
